This invention relates to strip splicing and, more particularly, to film splicing. The invention is especially suited for unloading and splicing so-called "110" cartridge film; however, the invention may be adapted to unload and splice other types of cartridge film, or to splice other types of cartridge film, or to splice conventional roll film, or to splice tapes, ribbons, bands, elongated webs or generally similar strip materials for photographic and/or other applications.
Most commercial cartridge film processors manually open and unload each film cartridge and then manually feed each unloaded film strip into a splicer for splicing into a continuous film strip made up of several customers' film. Although the splicer typically is semi-automated, productivity of a splicing operation of this type is effectively limited by the rate at which the splicer attendant can open and unload each cartridge and then feed each unloaded film strip into the splicer.